I remember going to a lecture by Neil Gaiman in 2017 in which he said (I’m paraphrasing) that the way to write is to start writing, and don’t stop, don’t fix, just keep going until it’s done. The first draft is just to get it down on paper, get it finished. You can always fix it, but you can’t fix a blank page. The second draft is when you fix it, and figure out what it’s about. Once you know what it’s about, you remove everything that doesn’t add to that.
I have finished a first draft of the sequel to Only the Moon Howls (OtMH), a book published in 2014. Yeah, I know it’s 2020. This took a really long time!
It’s embarrassing how long it took.
OtMH had an epilogue that was intended to drag Caleb, the protagonist, into a situation where werewolves and vampires were running wild in his old hometown on the Maine coast. Easy to write… right?
It took me a long time to figure out the plot and get comfortable with the characters. The plot difficulties had to do mostly with creating a solid backstory for Caleb and his childhood friends. There were references to Caleb’s friends in OtMH, of course, but these were more from a distant view. A close-up was needed.
Imagining Caleb’s childhood and his relationships with his friends generated a lot of writing, very little of which will show up in the final draft. I wrote about 25,000 words about how Caleb’s adventures as a child, which will never see the light of day. I didn’t just make an outline or notes, I wrote complete scenes. I needed to do this.
I’ve read at least a dozen books on how to write fiction, some better than others. I’ve learned that every writer’s process is different and that I shouldn’t attempt to mold my process to those of other writers.
I learn a lot about characters and the relationship between characters by throwing them into a scene and stepping back to see what happens. That means I need to write a lot of stuff that never makes it into the final draft. However, the final draft might contain a throwaway reference that tells the reader something about the characters. Consider this exchange from the draft:
“Maybe not the first time I was here,” Caleb mused. “That was—”
“New Year’s Eve,” she finished stiffly as she balled up the dough and threw it into a bowl on the counter, which wobbled from the impact.
“That’s right, New Year’s Eve.” Caleb’s face softened and he smiled at the memory. “Toby talked his mother into letting him bring some champagne that night. I remember that was the first time I ever had a drink. But mostly I remember meeting your aunt and the stories she told us about all the places she’d been. She even told us about going to Romania and looking for werewolves in the mountains, which is an odd coincidence, I’ve always thought.”
Sophia slapped the dough to level its surface. She cast about, looking for the kitchen towel that should have been on the counter. She couldn’t find it, which drove her to rattle drawers as she jerked them open.
“That’s why you left, was it?” She scowled at him, clutching the towel she’d tugged out of a reluctant drawer.
Sophia glimpsed the pain in Caleb’s eyes before staring down at the dough, obsessively smoothing the towel over the top of the bowl. He didn’t speak for a few long moments.
Yes, there is a whole scene, hiding in a drawer somewhere, that explains that New Year’s Eve. It is a lovely scene, full of poignance and foreshadowing. But it didn’t make it into the draft, except for this reference.
Three years ago, I spent an intense weekend with Moon. (Weekends with Moon are always delightfully intense.) We sketched out a plot diagram with circles and arrows… When I look at that diagram now, I see that I pretty much followed it. Why did it take three years? I guess because it’s one thing to draw circles and arrows, but another to make it believable.
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